Tickled Pink

Total Raised in 2014

£40 million raised since 1996

History

About us

Tickled Pink

Tickled Pink has been raising money for Breast Cancer Campaign and Breast Cancer Care for the last seventeen years and has raised £40 million so far. This year Tickled Pink became a registered charity in its own right and aims to raise a further £5 million to continue supporting the amazing work of Breast Cancer Campaign and Breast Cancer Care.

This year, we are encouraging everyone to lend a hand for Tickled Pink. It’s easy to get involved either by making a donation on line or in store or by purchasing a Tickled Pink products available throughout September and October. Or why not offer a further helping hand and hold your own fundraising event to raise money for this amazing cause? However you choose to support Tickled Pink, we would like to thank you – we couldn’t do it without you and your generosity is helping us make a difference to thousands of people affected by breast cancer.

Breast Cancer Care

Every day thousands of women wake up to the harsh reality of breast cancer. Breast Cancer Care provides a unique lifeline of free local support and information to help women, men and families. There are many ways to face breast cancer. Breast Cancer Care is there to help people to find theirs.

In 2014 money raised through Tickled Pink will contribute to funding two of Breast Cancer Care’s key local face to face support services; HeadStrong and Moving Forward.

HeadStrong: Approximately half of the 55,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer every year will be treated with chemotherapy, and will potentially face the distressing effects of losing their hair, eyebrows and eyelashes. Losing your hair can be one of the most traumatic parts of treatment. Breast Cancer Care’s local HeadStrong services offer a lifeline of support and practical advice in face to face sessions. Every £50 raised through fundraising is enough to fund a HeadStrong session, helping people with emotional support when they need it most.

Moving Forward: It is estimated that over half a million women in the UK today are now living with and beyond breast cancer and this number is rising. Preparing for life after treatment is a crucial phase. Breast Cancer Care’s free four-week support courses help provide face to face support and expert clinical information on how to cope and adjust to life after treatment. This year, Asda’s Tickled Pink campaign and its incredible fundraising, is ensuring that more people in local communities can attend these transformational support services then ever before.

Breast Cancer Campaign

In the last 20 years, the campaign to beat breast cancer has gone from strength-to-strength, and more women are outliving the disease than ever before. But, it’s still the most common form of cancer which is why action is vital.

Breast Cancer Campaign launched the Tissue Bank in response to demands by researchers for tissue samples. Tissue samples are the closest a scientist can get to the actual disease before testing in patients. By increasing access to such samples, we will accelerate research; and by standardising the collection of tissue, results will be more reliable, bringing greater benefits to patients, faster.

Asda is a founding partner of the Tissue Bank and money raised by Tickled Pink in 2014 will enable Breast Cancer Campaign to continue supporting the Bank, which is vital to research and a major step forward towards finding the cures for all breast cancers.

Tickled Pink funding also enables Breast Cancer Campaign to fund life-saving research projects across the UK, looking at areas including risk and prevention, improving diagnosis and developing new and more tailored treatments.

Over the last 17 years, Tickled Pink has raised over £40 million for Breast Cancer Campaign and Breast Cancer Care

Jill's Christmas Reflection

APPROX 5,000 BREAST CANCER PATIENTS MISSING OUT ON FERTILITY CARE

According to new research from Breast Cancer Care, the majority (88%) of younger women with a breast cancer diagnosis are not being referred to a fertility clinic to discuss the possibility of freezing eggs or embryos ahead of treatment

£20

Breast Check

Be breast aware

Across the UK, around 50,000 people, including 400 men, are diagnosed with breast cancer every year. Breast cancer is now the most common cancer in the UK. Whilst incidence rates are increasing, people are now living longer with the disease. They are more aware of breast cancer and along with the NHS screening service, this can lead to earlier detection. People also have access to improved treatments, thanks to advances in research.

Whatever your age, size or shape, it’s important to take care of your breasts and check them regularly

About Breast Cancer

Do you have any questions about breast cancer or breast health? You can get in touch with Breast Cancer Care and Ask the Nurse by email and one of their expert nurses will get back to you. If you need more information about breast cancer visit the Breast Cancer Care website or call their Helpline on 0808 800 6000.

Glossary

Breast cancer and you

Breast Cancer in Families

Moving forwards

Treating breast cancer

We would love to hear from you – get in touch to share your ideas for Tickled Pink

Research

Breast Cancer Campaign Research and Achievements

In the last twenty years, the campaign to overcome breast cancer has gone from strength to strength, and more women are outliving the disease than ever before. But, it's still the most common form of cancer with around 50,000 women diagnosed every year in the UK. That’s why Breast Cancer Campaign exists. Through our life-saving research we offer hope. We passionately believe we owe it to everyone touched by this disease; mothers, daughters, husbands, sons, and friends to explore every avenue to overcome and outlive breast cancer – in our lifetime.

Through the Tickled Pink campaign, Asda colleagues, customers and suppliers have enabled us to continue to fund research projects across the UK.

Here are a few examples of our life-saving research and how it is helping to transform the lives of people affected by breast cancer.

Dr Jeremy Blaydes

Chemotherapy is one of the most common cancer treatments and is hugely successful in eliminating cancer cells and treating the disease. However, over time some women develop resistance to chemotherapy rendering the treatment ineffective. Dr Jeremy Blaydes and his team at the University of Southampton have made significant progress in finding an alternative treatment to chemotherapy after resistance by discovering a new way to target a breast cancer cells’ appetite for over-indulging in sugar. The drug, being developed by scientists in Southampton, exploits a new link identified by Dr Blaydes’ team between sugar processing in the cells and their growth and division. This approach to treating breast cancer offers a real alternative to chemotherapy as it targets the active cancer cells and not normal cells, reducing the risk of side effects that affect thousands of women undergoing treatment.

Prof Diana Harcourt and Dr Fiona Kennedy

Tickled Pink funding has helped pioneer psychosocial research into DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ), a form of cancer where the cells are enclosed in the breast ducts, and may only “invade” the rest of the breast in half of cases. However, currently we don’t know which half will go on to become invasive breast cancer. Breast Cancer Campaign’s Professor Diana Harcourt and Dr Fiona Kennedy interviewed patients to understand their experiences of having DCIS and then made recommendations to standardise information about the condition, encouraging healthcare professionals to make information about diagnosis to treatment decisions easier to understand. Their work has informed a website which offers stories about women diagnosed with DCIS making information more easily accessible for the 4,800 women in the UK diagnosed with DCIS each year.

Dr James Flanagan

Dr James Flanagan, a Breast Cancer Campaign Scientific Fellow at Imperial College London has been looking into how molecules that sit on top of our DNA (an area called epigenetics) could help with early breast cancer detection and diagnosis. Dr Flanagan uncovered the first strong evidence that the amount of a molecule called methyl attached to a gene can influence women’s potential risk of breast cancer developing many years in advance. By piecing together how methyl molecules are added to our DNA and how this effects risk, doctors and scientists can look to create a blood test to help identify those at highest risk helping doctors to monitor and one day even prevent breast cancer ever developing. These findings also provide insight into the development of other cancers, including lymphoma and leukaemia.

Breast Cancer Campaign Tissue Bank

Money raised in 2014 will also allow us to continue to invest in vital research projects across the UK so that new interventions, new treatments, and better information and support reach patients quickly and efficiently.

We are optimistic about the future. Working together in partnership, Asda colleagues, customers and suppliers are helping us raise awareness and ultimately save more lives. Thank you for your continued support.

When the world's leading scientists told us that the biggest barrier to rapid progress was a lack of access to high quality tissue, we were determined to remove it by launching The Breast Cancer Campaign Tissue Bank. Tissue samples are the closest a scientist can get to the actual disease before testing in patients, so a huge amount of breast cancer research relies on significant volumes of high quality samples. By increasing access to such samples, we will accelerate research; and by standardising the collection of tissue, results will be more reliable, bringing greater benefits to patients, faster.

Asda is a founding partner of the Tissue Bank and money raised by Tickled Pink in 2014 will enable Breast Cancer Campaign to continue supporting the Bank, which is vital to research and a major step forward towards finding the cures for all breast cancers.

We now have over 30,000 samples from more than 5,000 patients and these samples are available to all breast cancer researchers across the UK and Ireland.

In addition, for some of the patients who donated tissue to the Bank we have at least five years’ worth of anonymous information about their disease. This is valuable information for researchers to help understand how to reduce the risk of death from breast cancer for patients in the future.

One of our centres has been undertaking cutting edge work and growing human breast cell cultures from donated tumour samples. This unique and valuable resource has recently been made available to researchers, and Tickled Pink has helped us to achieve this.